Donald Sanders

I hate those hacker guys!

Have you ever heard of “Denial of Service agents?” Neither had I until just a few days ago, but here’s the answer. Hackers can covertly install “self-operating” software called “Denial of Service agents” which sends out a huge number of requests all at once until it saturates your computer’s resources. What it does next, I don’t even know. I don’t even know why I told you this.

Oh yeah, self-operating, that’s why. I guess that means your computer can do pretty much what it wants. Now this is really scary when you consider the fact that all of your devices are interconnected. That means one device can communicate with all of your other little thingies. Just what are all of these devices up to? I don’t think anybody knows for sure.

There is one particular “self-operating” denial of service agent that I see almost every day. Its name is the “I Love You virus.” This virus broke all of the records with the speed that it spread across the globe. Just about everybody has opened it at least once. The virus comes in via your email. Once opened, it sends emails with copies of itself to all of your contacts. Your contacts will open the email thinking it is from you and then it does the same thing to them and their contacts.

Do you want to know something really scary? Okay, here it is. My computer determines the overall strength of the entire network! Whoa! Here’s why. When systems are interconnected through a network, the weakest systems that are connected to the network are generally the most vulnerable to attack. In effect, these weaker sites determine the overall strength of the network itself.

Another scary thing is the fact that “it is all connected!” All portable storage devices can be used to slurp information, including digital cameras, PDAs, thumb drives, mobile phones and other plug-and-play devices which have storage capabilities. ‘Pod slurping’ refers to the use of MP3 players such as iPods and other USB storage devices to steal sensitive corporate data. When connected to a computer it can slurp (copy) large volumes of corporate data onto an iPod within minutes.

You would think it would be easy for corporations to catch these guys (hackers). Okay, when some guy comes in your front door with a big bag full of iPods, thumb drives, or floppies, you have him or her arrested. How simple is that?

What I really hate about the whole thing is that what you do with one device will show up on another. Like, if you play a game on any computer, it shows up on Facebook like this: “Donald scored 550 points on the Circle Jerk game! Donald is now ‘The Pivot man!’”

Okay, to end this in a good way, I’m going to ask you all for a favor, just for me. Just because it says something on Facebook, it doesn’t mean I actually did it, okay? The self-operating software is probably doing it all by itself. So give me a break!

The next time you are on Facebook and see, “Donald visited Betty’s Porn Barn,” do not hit the “Share” button and do not “Like” it, either. Please, do me this one favor.